


Best Served Cold

by Atalan



Series: A Certain Celestial Agency [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Canon-Compliant, Fluff, Gen, Gone Native, M/M, Mystery, Plot, Post-Canon, Romance, She/Her Pronouns for Beelzebub (Good Omens), Unofficial Sequel, buckle up folks I have thoughts about the ineffable plan, casefic, christian symbolism and lore, ineffable husbands, slowburn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:47:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26774617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atalan/pseuds/Atalan
Summary: Sequel to "Instructions Not Included".Two months after that whole business with Raphael's staff, Aziraphale and Crowley are about to be dragged back into the politics of Heaven and Hell whether they like it or not. An old enemy resurfaces to cause problems on purpose, they're hired to investigate a highly unusual missing persons case, and Crowley has a very bad day at the office.Or: Crowley and Aziraphale run a supernatural detective agency. Shenanigans ensue. Slowburn continues. Apparently, there is plot. I have some thoughts about Heaven, Hell, and humanism. There will be stupid jokes and a healthy sprinkling of angst.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: A Certain Celestial Agency [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1534304
Comments: 145
Kudos: 342





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> WE'RE BACK. This fic will be 10-12 chapters, and will be followed by a third story to finish off the series. I'm expecting to update weekly on Fridays, but with the usual caveat that if I have a bad patch with my health, I might have to delay or switch to a different schedule.

It was intolerable. Absolutely unacceptable. Fiendish disruption of the highest order. Aziraphale would _not_ stand for it. He'd only left the bookshop for an hour, going in search of a particular pastry that he was currently very fond of, and he'd come back to _this_.

The worst part was that Crowley didn't even look ashamed of himself. He was leaning intently over Aziraphale's desk, which he had _cleared._ He had _moved Aziraphale's things_ , including the folio he'd been working on restoring, and which was at a very delicate stage with its glue and binding. The desk also looked suspiciously bigger than it should be.

Aziraphale cleared his throat. In the arena of non-verbal social warfare, there had never been a cough so reminiscent of an opening round of cannon fire.

"Morning," Crowley said absently. "Did you get coffee?"

Aziraphale had, in fact, brought coffee. Although one of Crowley's ridiculously complicated espresso machines had recently appeared in Aziraphale's kitchen, Aziraphale had discovered that, for some reason, bringing back an objectively worse beverage in a paper cup made Crowley smile at him like he'd just volunteered to tempt the whole of Parliament. And Aziraphale quite liked that, just as he quite liked the way that, over the last couple of months since that whole business with Raphael's staff, Crowley had been going back to his flat less and less, and Aziraphale's little-used bedroom was slowly starting to look like someone lived there.

There were, however, some downsides to having him around so much. Such as the current situation. In a fit of pique, Aziraphale turned the cup of coffee in his hand into his favourite brand of hot chocolate.

"I did not," he said frostily. "What have you done to my desk?"

Crowley shot him an exasperated look.

"I'll put it back when I'm done."

"It's never the same afterwards, you know that." 

Antique furniture never felt quite right after being unmade and remade, like it had lost its ground-in years of existence in the process. Crowley claimed Aziraphale was imagining it and wouldn't even be able to tell the difference if he didn't know it had happened. Aziraphale disagreed. Vehemently.

"I just needed more space to work with, I think I'm onto something here."

"You're certainly on my last nerve," Aziraphale snapped. "This hobby of yours is getting out of hand."

"It's not a _hobby_ —" Crowley made a frustrated noise and finally straightened up. "Ugh. Lost my concentration. Thought I had a solution, but it's gone."

Aziraphale sniffed unsympathetically. Crowley started gathering up the cards that he had laid out over the desk, shuffling them roughly back together. There were a good deal more of them than one might expect from a standard deck.

Aziraphale rather enjoyed card games, but he'd never seen the appeal of solitaire. Too much of it relied purely on chance, the random luck of the draw. He didn't much like dedicating himself to solving a puzzle only to discover that it couldn't _be_ solved. Crowley had tried to introduce him to something called _Free Cell_ on the computer, claiming that every spread had a solution, but Aziraphale _definitely_ couldn't see the appeal of clicking around on little pixel representations of cards for hours.

Before the invention of mobile phones and their marvellous ability to occupy fidgety hands, Crowley had played a lot of solitaire. He'd even invented some of the popular variants. He usually cheated, of course. Aziraphale had no idea how he got any satisfaction out of it that way, but he'd never felt a need to comment on it.

Until lately, when Crowley had become _obsessed_ with the game, inventing more and more complex variants with dizzying layers of rules that Aziraphale half-suspected were changing every time Crowley got distracted. Every flat surface in the bookshop had been a victim at some point. Some of them still were; Crowley kept leaving the spreads out unfinished, saying that he was sure he'd figure it out eventually. And then he'd start a new one somewhere else.

Aziraphale was starting to think Crowley was doing it solely to irritate him, an impression only reinforced by the bizarre variety of cards included in his decks. There were ordinary playing cards, and several different varieties of tarot cards, but as time went on, Aziraphale started seeing stranger and stranger additions. Cards with big, brightly-coloured numbers and symbols on them. Cards with cartoon pictures of odd little portmanteau creatures. Cards with portraits of fantastic monsters and obscure text about non-existent spells. There were a few in there that Aziraphale was sure were from a game of snap, and at least one baseball card that Crowley must have had since the 1930s.

Well, Aziraphale had had enough. He put down the hot chocolate and snapped his fingers. The cards Crowley hadn't yet gathered up vanished. The desk returned to its usual proportions. All of the clutter that had been swept aside was restored to its rightful place. Aziraphale crossed the room to check on his poor folio, ignoring Crowley's noise of protest.

"Oh, come on, angel, I would've fixed it— what've you done with my cards?"

"I don't see why it matters. You always seem to find more of them."

"It _matters_ , okay, it's all about the correspondence and the relative frequency and—"

Despite Aziraphale's best attempt, the folio had not come back quite right. He was going to have to redo the whole gluing process. He scowled down at the volume.

" _Crowley_ ," he snapped. "I am sick and _tired_ of finding cards everywhere. Kindly do not touch my desk or its contents again."

"Fine!" Crowley shoved the cards he'd managed to collect into a pocket. "But where did you put them? I need them back."

"I believe you'll find them in your flat. Where there are _plenty_ of empty, open surfaces that you could utilise, instead of moving my books around and disrupting my work!"

"You mean your _hobby_ ," Crowley corrected snidely. "Which apparently you get to have and I don't."

"I thought you said it wasn't a hobby?"

Crowley made a wordless, frustrated sound and turned away in a huff. Aziraphale listened to him stomping around the bookshop as he settled into his chair and began to assess what needed to be done to get the folio back to where it had been before he'd gone out for breakfast.

"Aren't you coming?" Crowley demanded from somewhere near the door. "It's time to go to _work_."

"Do you know," Aziraphale replied without looking up, "I feel like I'm due a day off. I'm sure you can handle things without me."

"Argh!" Crowley was probably throwing his head back dramatically, but Aziraphale definitely wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of looking at him. "You're _impossible_. Fine, have your day off to sulk. Maybe I'll see you later." The shop bell jingled as Crowley opened the door. "Or maybe I'll just go home for the evening, seeing as you can't even spare me a table for an hour or two—"

"What an excellent idea," Aziraphale replied icily. "I'll see you at the office tomorrow."

There was a pause for a fraction of a second.

"Right," Crowley said. "Okay then."

The door slammed behind him, rattling the glass set into it. Aziraphale felt a moment's pang, before he looked down at the folio and remembered how cross he was. Really, it wasn't as though he'd told Crowley never to darken his door again. All the same, the last thing he wanted was to give the impression that he... didn't want Crowley around. He'd done that quite deliberately for centuries, afraid of who might be watching, and Crowley had always understood that it was just for show, but things were... different, now. Perhaps he shouldn't have been quite so harsh. Perhaps he should have tried to compromise...

The vague sense of guilt lasted for about half an hour, at which point the shop bell tinkled, and Aziraphale discovered that the wretched demon had turned the sign to _open_ on his way out.

* * *

Lily was already at her desk when Crowley stomped his way into the office. She looked at him, looked at the space where Aziraphale wasn't, and raised her eyebrows.

"He's _having a day off_ ," Crowley told her. "Honestly, he never _touches_ half the stuff in the bookshop, and he _knows_ I always put it back exactly how it was—"

"Eventually," Lily remarked, with a meaningful glance at the coffee table and its spread of cards that Crowley had been struggling over for a week or so. "You know, if you want a tarot reading, you could just ask Anathema."

"It's not tarot, it's— oh, you're as bad as each other!"

Crowley slouched over to the coffee machine in a grand sulk. He glared at the thing so fiercely that it immediately produced the best espresso of its existence. Coffee connoisseurs would have killed to taste it. Crowley knocked it back like a shot. The coffee machine wept silently.

"So, today's question—" Lily began.

"Give me a minute, would you? Let me get some caffeine in me."

"You're an immortal demon whose physical body is barely more than a particularly fancy hat, you don't _need_ caffeine."

"It's all in the mind," Crowley retorted, filling up his cup again, this time adding hot water and - though he was careful not to let Lily see - a touch of milk. "And my mind needs coffee in the mornings."

He could almost hear Lily's thoughtful frown.

"What about other addictive substances?" she asked. "Stimulants, narcotics and so on. Does your body get withdrawal symptoms? How much of it is psychological?"

Crowley turned to shoot her a pointed look over his coffee.

"Is that your question?"

Lily grimaced and tapped her pen on the desk as she thought about it.

"No," she decided, "I'll leave that for another day."

The deal they had struck with Lily - well, the deal that _Crowley_ had struck with Lily, because he was the one she tended to ask - was that she got one question a day. Not basic questions, of course. She was free to ask where the milk was, or who'd been editing the database to contain eBay-style ratings of various supernatural phenomena, or if they could please shut up for five minutes while she made a phone call.

But when it came to questions about their natures as an angel and demon, or Heaven and Hell, or the particulars of the human soul, Crowley had been firm. She got one a day. Not least because he was slightly worried that if he let her interrogate him without a limit, he was going to embarrass himself by admitting how few of the answers he was really sure of. He felt it was important not to let the humans know that sort of thing. Angels - and even demons, in an upside-down sort of way - were supposed to be authority figures, after all.

Not that Lily treated them like anything of the sort. Crowley would have expected more anxiety and alarm from her, more questions about her own fate after death, or the truth behind various religious beliefs, but Lily seemed to have simply waved all of that aside without pause. Her interest was firmly in _them_ , to a level that was almost disconcerting. She wanted to know what they'd been doing for six thousand years. How they'd ended up as friends. Why they'd defied Heaven and Hell to prevent Armageddon. And she wanted to know their _opinions_ about things. What did they think of Earth? Why had they sided with humans? Did they think it was fair, that humans had such a stark choice between two opposites, and could end up punished for eternity for a relatively short lifetime of sin?

(That one had eaten at Crowley for several days. It wasn't as if he hadn't thought about it before. He just usually made sure to _stop_ thinking about it as soon as possible. And tried not to notice any faces he recognised among the damned souls when he went back to Hell to report.)

"Go on, then," Crowley said, deciding that he was as ready as he was going to get. "Ask away."

Lily leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands and regarding him with that peculiar intensity that always made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

"What do you think happens next?"

"What d'you mean?"

"Well, there was a Great Plan, wasn't there? And now there isn't. No schedule for Armageddon. No war between Heaven and Hell. So where do we go from here?"

Crowley froze. He tried to buy time by taking a long sip of coffee, his mind racing.

He wanted to say, _I have no bloody clue, and it's keeping me up at nights_.

He wanted to say, _I've got a really bad feeling that the answer is going to hit us in the face when we least expect it._

He wanted to say, _I reckon whatever it is, it's going to involve you lot finally deciding you've had enough of being bossed around, taking on Heaven and Hell, and making your own destinies, but I am absolutely not going to be the demon responsible for putting that idea in your head._

He glanced at the solitaire spread on the table. It had been close to working out, but then he'd hit what seemed like an impossible move, and he hadn't yet found a way past it.

_Can God design a game so complex that even She is unable to complete it without breaking the rules?_

"I think things just carry on," Crowley said, after a pause that he knew was tellingly long. "Heaven keeps doing what Heaven does. Hell keeps doing what Hell does. We keep doing what we do, only now we don't have to take orders from either of them."

"That doesn't sound like a plan," Lily said, still watching him. "That sounds like a holding pattern."

"Sometimes I think the whole last six thousand years have been a holding pattern," Crowley blurted out. He could have kicked himself. Lily's expression resembled a shark that had scented blood. "Look, something'll come along, you'll see. Been a while since we had any good prophets or divine visitations. Someone's bound to pop up with a stone tablet or whatever sooner or later."

Lily did not look in any way satisfied with that answer, but to Crowley's boundless relief, she was prevented from replying by a knock at the door. He looked at the door, looked at her, and jerked his head pointedly. Lily sighed and got to her feet.

"If it's that guilt-tripping charity woman again I'm going to make her nose fall off," she muttered.

"Can you do that?" Crowley asked with interest.

"No," Lily admitted with a scowl. "It's very frustrating."

She opened the door. Somewhat to Crowley's disappointment, it was only a delivery person holding a package. He immediately lost interest, wandering over to the table to look over his card spread again. The rules for this one had been iteration... five? Six? Something like that. Not as complex as the spread he'd been working on at the bookshop - another flash of annoyance went through him as he remembered he'd have to retrieve the cards from his flat - but still fiendish enough to defeat any mortal who tried it. And possibly fiendish enough to defeat _him_ , although he had this nagging feeling that if he could just look at it from a slightly different angle...

Lily dumped a cardboard box down in the middle of the table, displacing several of the cards.

"Oi!"

"It's for you," she said, although she was already retrieving the scissors from her desk. "More stationery?"

"Didn't order any," Crowley replied with a frown, looking at the package.

The label certainly read _Mr A J Crowley_ , but there was no return address. The box was surprisingly plain, just brown cardboard without any of the usual branding. It looked like it might have been taped up by hand. There was a picture of some kind of lizard on the delivery stamp.

Lily returned with the scissors and leaned over to slide the blade through the tape. Crowley squinted at the stamp. The company was one he didn't recognise, named _Go Gecko_ of all things—

One of the advantages of being a supernatural entity was that one could, on occasion, think very _very_ fast. Crowley's danger instincts were sharper than those of any creature on the planet. And despite what Aziraphale thought of his crossword-solving skills, he could put information together as well as anyone. Particularly when it was directly relevant to his own survival.

 _Good things come in small packages, but so does revenge_. _Beware of geckos bearing gifts._

Lily was already pulling up the flap. Crowley could smell it, the stink of spite and malice, and the subtler undertones of something more mundane but just as deadly: chemicals and ignition ready to combine.

The ironic thing about stopping time was that he _needed_ time to do it. Needed a few seconds to pull his concentration together and grab hold of the twisting chronological river and yank it to a halt with sheer force of will. He didn't _have_ a few seconds. He had pretty much exactly _one_ , and Lily was bending over the package, fragile and mortal and _human_.

One second wasn't enough to get her to safety, but he could shove her as far away as possible and cover her with his own body. So he did.

The explosion rocked the office, rocked the whole building, tore out the nearest wall and ripped a hole in the floor underneath. No warning shot, this: this was intended to kill everyone in the room when the thing was opened. Crowley had opened his wings in desperation, trying to shield Lily from as much of the blast as he could, and the feeling of the shockwave and then the shrapnel shredding them was an agony so great he barely noticed the way that the rest of his body had become a shrieking soup of pain.

"Crowley!" Lily's voice sounded very far away, which Crowley was dimly aware was a cliche, but an accurate one, apparently. "Oh _shit_ — Crowley!"

He forced his eyes open and found that his vision was distorted and blurry. He was trying to breathe, out of habit, but his lungs weren't cooperating. He felt _wet_ , strangely, as if he'd been hit by a water balloon rather than a bomb. He realised belatedly that it probably had something to do with all the blood that was no longer inside his body where it belonged.

"Are you— hurt—" he croaked out, trying to focus on Lily. He'd pushed her behind her desk, which was now a pile of scrap wood. He could see cuts on her face, and she was covered in blood, but hopefully it was his, not hers. "You—"

The word ended in an unpleasant sort of gurgle, and Crowley found himself pitching forward onto what was left of the carpet. He was becoming increasingly aware that his body was damaged beyond anything he'd experienced before, beyond his ability to counteract with a healing miracle. _Shit_. This was very, very bad.

"Az... iraphale..." he managed to mumble. Angelic healing might be enough to save him. "Call—"

And then, to his considerable dismay, everything went black, and he felt the relentless dragging of Hell's infernal gravity on his immortal essence, as he discorporated for the first time in several thousand years.

* * *

Aziraphale ignored his mobile the first two times it vibrated with an incoming call. He had no intention of giving up on his sulk just yet, no matter what Crowley had to say for himself.

The shop phone rang next. Aziraphale pursed his lips and glared at it coolly until it stopped.

Then his mobile again. There was a way to decline a call, wasn't there? To indicate that he was not open to conversation? He picked up the device, expecting to see Crowley's name, and paused when instead he saw that the display read _Lily._

Perhaps Crowley had wheedled her into bothering Aziraphale on his behalf. On the other hand, Lily was remarkably resistant to wheedling of all kinds. Which might mean there was some genuine urgent business he needed to respond to. With a sigh, he tapped the button to accept the call.

"Hello, Lily dear, what can I—"

"Crowley's dead."

One of the disadvantages of being a supernatural entity was that one could, on occasion, think very _very_ fast. Too fast for the comforting blanket of shock to cushion the words. Too fast to stumble through the very human reactions of disbelief or confusion. Too fast for anything but a bolt of utter horror to strike directly to the heart.

"Wh—what?"

"There was a bomb, at the office— just get over here, hurry!"

Aziraphale had no memory of how he went from the bookshop to the office. An uncharacteristic amount of running might have been involved, or perhaps he simply unfolded his wings and flew. The next thing he knew, he was pushing through onlookers and police officers, past flashing blue lights and high-vis jackets, and ignoring quite a number of attempts to stop him.

The door of the office was hanging off its hinges. There were firemen and police shouting instructions at Lily to stay where she was while they made sure the floor was stable. A desperate-looking EMT was telling her she needed to stop the bleeding, and seemed unconvinced and not at all reassured when Lily yelled back that the blood wasn't hers.

Aziraphale had never got the hang of Crowley's trick with stopping time, and he didn't really _like_ interfering directly with human minds, but there weren't a lot of options here, and his whole being was still ringing with the reverberation of Lily's blunt words.

_Crowley's dead. Crowley's dead. Crowley's dead._

With a wave of his hand, the firemen realised that they would be better occupied checking on the other floors of the building. The police officers understood that the bomb site was being dealt with by someone else. The EMT was relieved to discover that there were no direct victims of the blast after all. The corridor outside the office cleared in seconds, even as Aziraphale began to pick his way through the ruined office to where Lily was sitting with her back against the far wall. Another quick miracle ensured that the floor was quite stable and safe.

"Are you hurt?" he asked. His throat felt numb, but the words were automatic. "Hold on, I can heal you in just a—"

"I'm not hurt!" Lily snapped. She must be in shock, Aziraphale thought, but more than anything she seemed _furious_. "Not properly, just scratches and bruises. He _saved_ me! He fucking— he got between me and the bomb, he took the whole force of it, I'm barely even touched but he— what sort of demon _does_ that for one damn human?"

Aziraphale felt sick when he saw how much blood had drenched the carpet and her clothes. No wonder the medic had been so alarmed.

There was no body, of course. When demons - or angels - were discorporated, their mortal shells fizzled away into their component atoms within relatively short order. Aziraphale had no idea if it was a side effect of the way they were made, or an intentional feature to avoid any awkward questions from humans. He'd never asked. He'd never needed to. In six thousand years, he'd only been discorporated once - courtesy of Sergeant Shadwell - as had Crowley, who still hadn't stopped moaning about that unfortunate incident at the Tower of Babel.

Aziraphale knelt at Lily's side and ran a healing touch over her. His hand shook lightly, but she was right: superficial wounds only. He healed them all the same. Then, with a shudder and a snap of his fingers, he miracled away Crowley's blood.

(It was strange that it didn't vanish with the corporation. But then, blood had always had its own unique metaphysical qualities.)

"He's— gone," Aziraphale said stupidly after a moment. "He's really—?"

"He died right in front of me," Lily replied flatly. "I mean, it's not really _dying_ , but—"

"Discorporation," Aziraphale offered miserably. The initial shock was giving way to an awful litany of _consequences_ , of all the fears he'd had since they'd parted ways with their respective sides. He helped Lily to her feet, but he wasn't really sure which of them actually needed the support. "Oh, this is very bad, this is terrible. He'll be back in Hell by now. He won't get another body unless they give him one, and the chances of that— oh, and what if they decide that now he's in their power, they've changed their minds about leaving us alone— what if— oh, I must do something, I—"

"Like what?" Lily demanded. "Walk into Hell and bring him back?"

Aziraphale bit his lip. Lily's eyes went wide, then narrowed.

"No," she said firmly. "I'm absolutely sure that _would not help_ right now."

"But I can't just sit here and do nothing—"

Lily reached out and put a hand on his arm. It was obviously intended as comfort, although she did it with the awkwardness of someone not used to offering it. Aziraphale thought vaguely that things were the wrong way around. She was the one who'd just been through a terrible experience, and she was only human. He ought to be comforting her.

"There's plenty to do," Lily said. "We need to sort this out. Get the office fixed up. Stop anyone asking awkward questions. You'd better get started on the witnesses, it'll take you the rest of the day to talk them all out of remembering any of this."

"I don't know if I should—"

"You'll be improving their lives. Easing their trauma or something."

The answer was far too glib. She'd obviously been spending too much time with Crowley. But she was right, and at least someone was thinking clearly while Aziraphale was still reeling.

"I'll call Anathema," Lily went on, jabbing at her phone screen and then clapping it to her ear. "If we received something like this—"

Aziraphale went cold as ice at the thought of an explosion ripping through Jasmine Cottage.

"Oh, goodness, no, that would— no, Adam wouldn't allow it, I'm sure—"

"I thought you said he had no power anymore?"

"I'm never entirely sure, truth be told. He might not have the full powers of the Antichrist, but he is still his father's son..."

"Is he, now?" Lily murmured absently, before her attention was no longer on him. "Anathema! Have you had any post today? Don't open any unexpected boxes, we've got a problem here—"

Aziraphale looked around the devastated office as he listened to Lily explain the situation with her characteristic bluntness. There was too much damage for him to fix with one miracle. He started with Lily's desk and chair, reconstituting them from the splinters and scraps they had become. Another gesture repaired the wall and door, so that at least the office appeared normal from the outside. That would have to do for now.

As he made his way back across the room, his foot caught on a twisted piece of metal so unrecognisable that it took him a long moment to realise that it was the remains of Crowley's coffee machine. Aziraphale stared at it for several seconds, thinking about the cup of coffee he'd refused to give Crowley before he left, the way he'd sent him off alone. A great, yawning gulf opened up somewhere in the middle of his chest, scoured by screaming winds and desperate, grinding grains of guilt. If he'd been here... if there had been two of them to deal with the disaster... if Aziraphale could have healed some of Crowley's wounds before they discorporated him...

He snapped his fingers, restoring the coffee machine to its place on the counter, though everything around it was still in ruins. Then he took a deep breath and went out to reassure everyone in the building that nothing particularly interesting had happened here at all.


	2. Chapter 2

Arriving in Hell was seldom a pleasant experience, but dropping in fresh from a discorporation had to be one of the worst ways to do it. 

Crowley landed flat on his face, sprawled across the filthy floor, and with the phantom pain of his injuries still rippling through his incorporeal form. He groaned, too disoriented to do more than flop about wildly until he'd managed to wriggle himself into a sitting position against the nearest wall. His back and shoulders hurt, which was completely unacceptable of them, given that they no longer had any actual pain receptors or nerve endings.

A couple of nearby demons and a few disconsolate lost souls were eyeing him from where the former appeared to be inflicting implements of torture on the latter. Crowley looked closer, and groaned again. He'd ended up in the _gym_ , of all places. If he didn't get out of here quickly, someone was going to try and force a protein shake down his throat, or order him to run laps. 

It dawned on him that he was in quite a lot of trouble. He couldn't get out of Hell without a corporation. Not unless he possessed a human, as Aziraphale had done with Madame Tracey, but that would be a short-term solution at best. Crowley needed his own body back. And if any of his particular enemies found out he was here in the meantime...

He scrambled to his feet, brushing his clothes down briskly as if he'd _meant_ to crash through the ceiling - metaphorically speaking - and gave what he hoped was a nonchalant nod to his audience. He realised then that he didn't have his sunglasses on. He felt naked without them, especially here. Even so, he forced himself to saunter away from the gym like he was in no hurry to get anywhere in particular.

Crowley found himself reaching for his phone automatically, but of course, it hadn't come with him any more than the glasses had. He cursed under his breath and ducked into a stairwell, heading for the lower levels. First things first, get out of sight. Stay under the radar. Get some breathing space, work out a plan. He wasn't completely friendless here, inasmuch as demons could be said to have friends. There were people who owed him favours. And if all else failed, he was still the demon who'd apparently survived holy water. His reputation might give him enough leverage to get him out of here.

It wasn't hard to get lost in the halls of Hell. It took somewhat more skill to get lost with _purpose_ , to navigate through the quiet spaces and the forgotten passages in such a way as to avoid notice. Crowley was very good at it. It had been his main hobby before he'd been assigned to Earth. He almost considered changing his form, getting right back to his roots by slithering around as a snake, but some superstitious fear kept him from trying it. He almost felt like it would be tempting fate, asking to be forced back into the role he thought he'd escaped.

Time was always a bit fluid away from Earth, but Crowley kept going for what felt like hours, slinking up and down between levels, skirting around busy offices, checking he wasn't being followed and making sure to dodge around corners when he heard footsteps. When he was finally confident that he could safely go to ground, he made for a particular spot that he remembered. It had once been the bottom of a well (and hadn't _that_ been a shock for the bystanders in the Roman Forum one sunny day in the first millennium BC) but sometime in the ensuing centuries it had been re-purposed as a damp and dreary storage closet. Last time Crowley had been by, there had been plenty of space for a demon to tuck himself away among the heaps of broken chairs and mouldering desks.

He ducked down the corridor that would take him to his hideout, hauled open an unnecessarily heavy fire door, and came face to face with Beelzebub, who was standing right in his path, with her arms folded.

"Crowley," said the Prince of Hell with a knowing smirk. "Fancy seeing you here."

"Ah," said Crowley. "Um."

"A little bird told me you might be dropping in."

Crowley tensed.

"Wait, did you send it? The bomb— you said you'd leave me alone!"

Beelzebub frowned.

"Bomb? Don't know anything about any bomb. Just got someone keeping an eye on you. They called in to say you'd had a bit of an accident."

She could be lying, of course, but Crowley found he believed her. If Beelzebub were responsible for his discorporation, she'd be more likely to gloat than deny it.

"Right," he said, trying his best breezy tone, as if that had ever worked on her. "Well. Lovely chatting with you, if you'll excuse me, got some things to see to—"

"Not so fast." It was amazing how thoroughly Beelzebub could fill space when she wanted to, despite her nominally small stature. "You're not getting out of here without a new body, and you're not getting one of thozze unless I say so."

Crowley gritted his teeth.

"You're going to keep me here?"

"Fuck, no," Beelzebub retorted with a scowl. "Last thing I want izz you hanging around giving thezze idiots any more stupid ideazz. No, Crowley, I've got a _propozzition_ for you."

"Oh, good," Crowley muttered. "Just when I thought this day couldn't get any better."

* * *

It had been an exhausting, miserable day, and Aziraphale should have been glad to reach the end of it. Instead, he found himself dreading his return to the bookshop, which would be too quiet, and at the same time too loud with all the self-recrimination lurking between the shelves. He was so preoccupied that he barely registered Lily's comment about keeping him company, and didn't process the full implications until they'd walked to Soho and she was following him through the front door.

"Hold on," Aziraphale said, confused. "Aren't you going home?"

"Not yet," Lily replied. She was looking around with her usual keen-eyed interest. Although she knew of the existence of the bookshop, she'd never visited before now. "I wouldn't have thought hoarding was considered very angelic."

"It's not _hoarding_ , I'm a _collector_ ," Aziraphale protested. "But, my dear, I insist, you must be tired out—"

"I've got my second wind." Lily wandered over to the nearest set of shelves and ran her eyes over the titles. "Fan of Milton, are you?"

Aziraphale grimaced.

"Hardly," he huffed. "The man had some _very_ funny ideas about what happened in the Garden of Eden. And Crowley has a _lot_ to say about his version of the Fall..."

He trailed off, thinking of Crowley down in Hell, alone in hostile territory. He didn't even realise he was wringing his hands until Lily cleared her throat pointedly.

"Tea?" she suggested.

"Yes, right, of course."

It was only when Aziraphale was already pouring boiling water into the pot that he realised he had quite failed to send Lily home as he'd intended. He tutted to himself, located a tin of biscuits, and made up his mind that after he'd done his duties as host, he'd usher her on her way.

When he returned with the refreshments, Lily was sitting on the sofa that Crowley usually occupied, and it sent such a pang through Aziraphale that the tea tray rattled in his hands. He went to set it down on the nearby table, realised that it was still covered in a spread of Crowley's cards, and found himself quite at a loss, standing with the tray in his hands like he didn't know what to do with it.

Lily regarded him for a moment, then got to her feet, retrieved a small end-table from a few feet away, and placed it by the sofa. Then she took the tray from his hands, and set it down, and poured them both a cup of tea. Aziraphale sank gratefully into his chair and allowed himself to be handed a warm, soothing mug.

"If you don't like Milton," Lily persisted, after they'd both had time to take a few sips, "why do you have fifteen copies of _Paradise Lost_?"

"Ah, it's— well, it's actually for the commentaries," Aziraphale explained. "Every time it's published, they've got a new set of ideas about what it really _means_ , what the author _intended_ , that sort of thing, and it's always much more about them and their current prejudices than it is about Milton, or even about God. It's fascinating."

"Why?" Lily asked.

Aziraphale gave her a puzzled look.

"Why is it fascinating?" Lily elaborated. "What's so great about humanity? You've been around for six thousand years. Surely you've seen it all by now. Humans don't really change much. How can you still think they're interesting?"

"Oh, but you _do_ change!" Aziraphale corrected her. "I mean, well, perhaps not in the _fundamentals_ , exactly, but... good heavens, you've all changed so much, _grown_ so much in six thousand years— it's quite remarkable! You've changed your whole world in ways I could never have imagined, back in the Beginning. You've even changed _yourselves_ , and done it quite deliberately, reached into your own minds and your own beliefs and tinkered with them to find something that serves you better. You never _stop_ changing, my dear. You are by far the most interesting creatures on the planet."

Lily made a noncommittal noise and sipped her tea.

"I prefer cats, myself." She glanced around the bookshop. "What about you? How much have you changed in six thousand years?"

Aziraphale didn't reply for a moment, staring into his teacup.

"Perhaps not enough," he found himself admitting. "But perhaps more than I should have. Angels were never meant to, you know. We were all supposed to be fixed in place. Everyone had a role from the moment we were created, from the Seraphim all the way down to the unranked angels in the Third Sphere. Everyone knew their place and their purpose, and we weren't supposed to desire anything else."

"That doesn't seem very fair."

"Yes, well, that's what Lucifer said, and look where it got him," Aziraphale replied, more uncomfortable with the conversation than he cared to examine. "Would you like a biscuit?"

Lily was more than capable of helping herself to a biscuit without waiting to be asked, but she accepted his unsubtle attempt to change the topic, as well as two chocolate hobnobs.

"If humans are so interesting," she said after crunching her way through the first biscuit and licking the chocolate off her fingers, "why was everyone so gung-ho to end the world?"

"Well, that was rather the... rather the point of disagreement," Aziraphale told her. "Between myself and Heaven. And between Crowley and Hell. And, of course, Adam felt the same way, and that was what really tipped the balance. They didn't care much about our opinions on the matter, unfortunately."

"So you think that in six thousand years, you and Crowley were the only ones who ever actually paid attention to humanity?"

"Not _exactly._ " Aziraphale reached for another hobnob, thinking back over the millennia. "In theory, paying attention to humanity is all they've been _doing_ all this time. Studying the observation files, recording saints and sinners, keeping an eye on the general trends... but it's all very _goal-focused_ , as Gabriel so likes to put it. It's all about winning souls, hitting our numbers for the century, keeping ahead of Hell. They like _solutions_ , up there. Four-step plans. Preferably the kind that can be repeated indefinitely with the same results. When humans start being all... _messy_ , and unpredictable, and, well, human, it tends to upset them. Buggers up the graphs and so on."

"And you think Hell's the same?"

"More or less. Ever since someone came up with the Seven Deadly Sins, it's all been about quotas and tempting people to the same handful of vices over and over again. No innovation. Except Crowley, of course, he's always had a much more subtle grasp on the way humans think. He's really very clever—"

Aziraphale stopped, hearing the waver in his own voice. He forced himself to calmly finish his tea and put it aside.

"Now, shall I call you a taxi, my dear?"

Lily made a rude noise and reached for another hobnob.

"You don't really think I'm leaving you alone like this, do you?"

"Like what?" Aziraphale demanded.

"Like you're going to drive yourself mad with worrying and come up with some hare-brained scheme to storm the gates of Hell," Lily said bluntly. "And that would be _very_ inconvenient for me, just so you know."

"I'm not— I wouldn't— well, _really_ , Lily, that's just—"

"I'm staying until Crowley gets back," Lily insisted. "No arguments."

"But what if he doesn't get back?" Aziraphale blurted out.

"You just said he was very clever, didn't you?" Lily smirked. "Which I'm going to tell him, by the way. So he'll think of something, won't he?"

* * *

Beelzebub's office looked like the worst kind of public toilet, from the stained tiles, to the graffiti on the whitewashed walls, to the actual toilet she was using as a chair. Her desk was always surprisingly organised, however. Crowley had a feeling that was Dagon's doing.

The only place to sit was a grimy old beanbag in front of the desk. Crowley reluctantly settled into it, grudgingly impressed by how thoroughly demeaning it was to be craning up at Beelzebub from the floor.

"Right," he said. "Proposition. Go on, then."

"All in good time," Beelzebub replied, propping her elbows on the desk and peering down at him like he was something she'd found in the garbage. Although, from her, that might actually be a compliment. "Heard you took out that warlock who wazz running around messing with my demonzz. Cleaned up Mephistopheles'zz mess for him."

"How is Meph, anyway?"

"Having a mizzerable time in the Department of Minor Blasphemiezz," Beelzebub told him with ghoulish glee. "He'll think twice about sneaking off without permission again."

While Crowley spared a moment of sympathy for Mephistopheles, he couldn't help noticing that it was a light punishment by Hell's standards. He didn't comment on it.

"Don't suppose putting a stop to Julia Gregory's attempt to free Azazel is enough to get me back in good - er, bad - standing?"

"You have no standing with Hell," Beelzebub said bluntly. "You're someone else'zz problem now."

Crowley frowned at her.

"Whose?"

"Dunno. Don't care." She leaned forward, eyes glinting. "You're playing at being some sort of _detective_ , I hear."

"We-ll... sort of," Crowley hedged. "Don't need to do a lot of _detecting_ , to be honest. Stuff just sort of turns up."

"But you tracked down the Gregory woman, didn't you?"

"Yeah, we found her."

"So you could find someone else."

"Depends," Crowley replied warily. "We're not stalking any angels for you—"

"Not an angel."

"Human, then? They're usually pretty easy to find."

Beelzebub shook her head.

"So a demon," Crowley finished. He glared at the Prince of Hell. "Not too keen on playing your enforcer, either—"

"Satan'zz fucked off somewhere and we can't find him," said Beelzebub.

There was a long pause. Crowley eventually remembered how his jaw worked.

"Ssssorry, what?"

"Satan," Beelzebub repeated with a scowl, "our Lord and Master, First among Fallen, etcetera, etcetera, hazz _left Hell_."

"But he doesn't _do_ that! Hasn't for centuries, at least."

"Yeah, well, he'zz been acting weird since _last year_ —" If looks could kill, Crowley would've already been in the ground twelve months since. "First there wazz all the shouting, then he sat in hizz throne room for agezz incinerating anyone who got near, and _then_ —" Beelzebub sounded utterly appalled and incensed, "he started asking questionzz. About how we're running the place. Wanted to look at the _numberzz_. He never looks at the numberzz! I've been keeping this show going for six millennia while he swanzz around getting all the credit, and now he wants to put hizz oar in?"

Crowley made a noncommittal noise and fidgeted awkwardly on the beanbag.

"Figured he'd got bored of it all again when he stopped showing up to pester me," Beelzebub went on with a grimace. "And then we realizzed we couldn't find him. Don't even know how long he'zz been gone. But he'zz not here, so that only leaves one place to look."

"Heaven?" Crowley suggested sarcastically, mostly to try and cover his own rising panic. "He finally got homesick?"

"Earth, you imbecile," Beelzebub snapped. "And that's _your_ department. So find him!"

"Yeah, look, no," Crowley said. "I understand that this is a big deal for you, but the absolute last thing I'm going to do is go _looking_ for Satan, who hates me, personally, for getting in his way and spoiling all his plans. In fact, now I know he's on Earth, I'm giving some serious consideration to relocating to the Moon—"

"You're not relocating anywhere without a body," Beelzebub countered. "And what makes you think _he_ izzn't looking for _you_? He wazz very... _very_... angry." She smirked. "Didn't you say something about a bomb?"

Crowley opened his mouth and then slowly shut it again. If he'd had a pulse right now, it would have been thundering in his ears. He wasn't the only being who'd stood up to Satan last year. And if the Lord of Hell, Adversary of Angels and undisputed master of holding a grudge, was pissed off with _Crowley_ , who was technically _supposed_ to disobey orders, one could only imagine how he felt about anyone else involved.

Aziraphale was alone up there. Crowley couldn't protect him while was stuck down in Hell. Beelzebub had him over the worst kind of barrel.

"Well?" Beelzebub demanded. "Do we have a deal?"

"What are you expecting us to do if we find him?" Crowley demanded wildly. "You want us to send him home with a telling-off?"

"Just tell us where he izz," Beelzebub replied, with an exasperated eye-roll. "If he wants to piss around on Earth for a bit that's hizz prerogative, but we want to know what he'zz _doing_ up there."

"So we could theoretically find him without letting him know we're there, and avoid any unpleasantness?"

"You can _try_ ," said Beelzebub, with a grin that would have made a corpse look cheery.

"Great," Crowley muttered. "I suppose we could give it a go, not _promising_ anything mind you, but we'll look into it—"

He paused.

"Wait, _we_?"

Beelzebub gave him a blank look, although there was suddenly something wary in her eyes.

"You said _we_ ," Crowley went on. Just like he'd said _we_ , to indicate that he would be working with Aziraphale. "You never say _we_. Even when you're following the Dark Council's orders, it's always _I_ and _me_. You're the Prince of Hell, you don't _collaborate_."

"Needzz must," Beelzebub replied brusquely. "Timezz change. No thanks to you—"

"You're talking about Heaven, aren't you?" Crowley plunged on. "They're looking for him too."

"That doezzn't concern you." Beelzebub rose from her lavatorial throne and glowered down at him. "Do we have a deal, Crowley?"

Of all people, Crowley knew the risks of making deals with demons. He sighed, scrambled awkwardly to his feet, and grudgingly shoved out a hand.

"Yeah," he said. "Okay. I'll do it. Now give me a new body."

Beelzebub grasped his hand for the minimum number of seconds required, then shook off her fingers as if she'd touched something disgusting, which was rich, coming from her.

"I've expedited your paperwork," she said. Then she smirked smugly. "But you'll still have to wait your turn. Been a bit of a run on corporationzz recently. Almost like something keeps _happening_ to the demonzz I send up to Earth."

Crowley groaned theatrically.

"I only discorporated _one_ of them, and it was an _accident_ , I swear. Half those idiots don't know what a motorway is or why you shouldn't cross one—"

"And the other half think industrial machinery is a fun new toy," Beelzebub finished for him glumly. "Botis got themselvezz shredded in a combine harvester last week. They'd only been up there a few hourzz."

Crowley winced.

"How long will it take?"

"Day or two, maybe. You might get lucky. Perhaps the queue's gone down a bit. Or someone might let you push in."

A day or two. By Hell's standards, that was practically light-speed. And it was still far, far too long to be away from Aziraphale.

"Fine," Crowley said, anything but fine. "I'll go and stand in the queue then, shall I?"

"It'll give you time to catch up with your old friends," Beelzebub said with a toothy grin.

Crowley gulped and wished yet again for his sunglasses.

"Can't wait," he muttered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 will be up in 2 weeks (Friday 23rd October) as I'm going to be 'attending' the virtual Ineffable Con next weekend.
> 
> Come and find me on [tumblr](https://brightwanderer.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/brightwanderer)!


	3. Chapter 3

The office was starting to look more like itself, through a combination of miracle work and Lily calling in a couple of contractors to fix the remaining damage. Nothing could be done about the papers and books that had been destroyed - reconstructing anything so filled with complex information was beyond Aziraphale's capacity - but fortunately pretty much everything was on the cloud database now, and Aziraphale hadn't brought any truly valuable books along in the first place.

The dust had been vacuumed out of the carpet, a fresh coat of paint had been put on the recently miracled walls, and new computers had been delivered to replace the ones that had been reduced to piles of shredded plastic and circuitry. Lily had insisted on upgrading hers to something called a Mac, which was more expensive, did basically the same things, and was aggressively incompatible with other systems. Aziraphale had a vague memory that Crowley had taken credit for those, though he couldn't recall if he'd actually been responsible.

He missed Crowley like an ache settling into the deep core of his soul. He was worried about him, of course. Anxious about what would happen in Hell. Fretting that they should be doing more to help. Distressing himself with convoluted imaginings of just how badly wrong everything could go from here. But underneath it all, there was something simpler and subtler: the quiet misery of sudden emptiness, the painful lack of companionship, the loss of a hundred little things that had become part of his daily life. It was ridiculous, or perhaps concerning, that he should feel it so intensely after only a couple of days. They'd been apart for hundreds of years at a time before, and Aziraphale had never felt this way.

(Or maybe he had, if he were honest. Maybe it had always been like this, and he'd just found ways to bury it deep and ignore it. Maybe he had always missed Crowley when the demon wasn't by his side, and it was only now, when spending their time together had become so easy, that Aziraphale could acknowledge it. Maybe, he thought, there was a part of him that would never not crave Crowley, no matter how much they had of each other.)

Aziraphale realised belatedly that someone had asked him a question. He blinked, and forced himself to re-focus on the conversation.

"Sorry, what was that, Anathema dear?"

"I said, I'm not getting anything useful from this," Anathema replied, with an uncharacteristic forgiveness for his inattention. She'd been swinging a crystal pendulum around the office for some minutes. "Except that it was definitely personal. Someone out to get you two in particular."

"I think we had guessed as much," Aziraphale replied glumly. "You said it was addressed to Crowley, didn't you, Lily?"

"Yes. I don't remember a return address."

"It'd probably be fake even if there was one," Anathema said. She pocketed her crystal with a sigh. "There wasn't anything magical about it, anyway. Just an ordinary bomb."

"The forensics people can track lots of things down these days," Newt put in helpfully. "They can study the pattern of the explosion, examine the wreckage, and analyse the chemicals used in the bomb. I watched a documentary."

As one, the rest of them looked over the almost-pristine office. Aziraphale winced.

"Perhaps we shouldn't have been so hasty with the repairs..."

"I don't expect they'd have found much," Anathema said soothingly. "If it's someone who's coming after you in particular, they're not likely to be an ordinary terrorist, are they?"

"I suppose not." Aziraphale looked down at his too-tidy desk. All his sticky notes and memos were gone, and he had been forced to resort to his third-favourite fountain pen. "But at the same time, why would anyone from either of our sides use something so crude as an explosive?"

"Perhaps they thought their usual methods wouldn't work," Lily suggested, with a frown of consideration. "You're special, after all. Different from the other angels and demons."

"Goodness, no, not _special_ ," Aziraphale blustered. He and Crowley had never told the humans about their trials, or their supposed immunity to holy water and hellfire, but Lily and Anathema were both more than capable of making educated guesses as to why they'd been left alone. "Just— er, well, I think they believe that we've _gone native_ , as it were."

Lily's eyebrows shot up.

"They 'believe'?"

"I suppose it would make sense, then, to use a human method of targeting us," Aziraphale went on quickly. "Maybe they even thought it would result in more than just discorporation. Or maybe the goal was simply to get us both discorporated at the same time, and prevent us returning to Earth..."

He trailed off into a silent welter of anxiety. He was dimly aware of Anathema and Lily exchanging glances, but it was Newt who jumped up and said, "Why don't I make us all a cup of tea?"

Lily hadn't quite carried out her threat to stick to Aziraphale's side until Crowley returned, but only because she'd let Anathema and Newt take turns chaperoning him. Aziraphale was quite torn between, on the one hand, indignation that the humans felt he, an Angel of the Lord, needed _looking after_ , and on the other, an overwhelming gratitude for their kindness and their company. They'd quietly arranged things between them so that someone was around even in the middle of the night, and although Aziraphale was beginning to chafe a bit at the lack of solitude, he was also relieved that he hadn't been left at the mercy of his own thoughts in the dark hours before dawn.

"I don't suppose you've had any visions that might help?" Aziraphale asked, although he was sure that Anathema would have mentioned anything of the sort. "How are you managing with those, anyway?"

"I think I'm getting the hang of it," Anathema replied, waving a hand vaguely. "Some of them still come out strangely, but the more... mundane they are, I guess, the more I can put them down in plain words. Anything that feels important still seems to turn into riddles and hints, like it's being difficult on purpose."

"More like the future is fluid," Lily said absently, focused on something on her screen. "People think in terms of big events, and assume the everyday is more variable, when it's the other way around. The quotidian details don't affect the broader outcomes, so they're more firmly fixed and easier to interpret."

Anathema shot her a surprised look.

"I didn't know you worked in that area."

"I don't." Lily scowled. "I'm not a big fan of anything that smacks of predestination. But I've been doing some reading recently."

"Do you have any recommendations?"

Aziraphale tuned them out as he caught the sound of someone coming up the stairs outside. For a moment, he was on high alert, concerned about another attack, but then he registered the rhythm of the footsteps, the ridiculous urgency of their ascent, the overtones suggesting that their owner might trip on his own feet at any moment.

He was out of his chair before the door even opened.

"Crowley!"

"Angel!" Crowley looked none the worse for wear, sunglasses firmly in place and wearing his usual all-black outfit, though his agitation was written all over him. "Are you—"

"About time," Lily interrupted.

Crowley came to a sudden stop just inside the door, taking in the rest of the office. 

"The whole gang's here, I see."

"What took you so long?" Anathema demanded.

"What— so long— took—" Crowley sputtered for a moment in outrage. "This was _fast_! This was _expedited paperwork_! This was _talking my way to the front of the queue_ —"

Aziraphale found himself standing awkwardly by his desk, suddenly at a loss as Crowley's attention was redirected, feeling almost bereft. He'd been moving towards Crowley with full intent to— to take hold of him somehow, maybe even to embrace him, to hold onto him for a moment and take a deep breath and reassure himself that— that Crowley wasn't about to vanish again in a puff of smoke. When Crowley had opened the door, he'd all but forgotten that the others were even in the room.

Perhaps it was for the best, he thought reluctantly, even as he drank in Crowley's face and voice and gestures until he felt giddy with relief. Perhaps he didn't quite want to make himself that vulnerable in front of the humans. Crowley would surely agree.

"My dear," he settled for saying, "it's very good to see you."

Crowley sauntered across the room and came to an uncertain stop next to him. After a moment where he didn't quite seem to know what to do with himself, he leaned against Aziraphale's desk. They weren't touching, but Aziraphale felt an almost-unnoticed tension drain away as Crowley settled in on his left.

"You've cleaned the place up, then," Crowley said, looking around. "Everyone else okay? No more explosions?"

"We're fine," Anathema said. "We're checking everything that arrives more carefully now. Newt almost threw a box of envelopes out of the window for looking 'suspicious'."

"I did not."

"Expedited paperwork?" Aziraphale repeated, finally processing some of Crowley's initial babbling. "How did you manage that?"

Crowley grimaced.

"Beelzebub has a job for us."

Aziraphale turned to stare at him in disbelief. Crowley shrugged defensively.

"She was quite persuasive," he said. "It was take it or be stuck in Hell for the foreseeable. Anyway, it's something we need to look into for our own safety."

Aziraphale didn't like the sound of any of this, but he couldn't find it in him to snap at Crowley for whatever deal he'd struck. He was so very glad to see him, and whatever the price, surely it was worth it, to get Crowley back so swiftly.

"What, then?"

Crowley hedged for a moment, made an expressive face, glanced at the humans in the room, and then sighed explosively.

"She wants us to find Satan. He's gone AWOL."

"What," said Lily flatly. Everyone else was too busy staring at Crowley in shock. "She wants you to _what_."

Crowley threw up his hands and launched himself across the room to where Newt was still standing by the kettle, four forgotten mugs of tea on the counter. Crowley glared at them until they started steaming again, and then started jabbing buttons on his coffee machine.

"Yeah, look, it's not exactly my idea of a fun time, but he's here on Earth somewhere and I personally would feel a lot better if I knew exactly _where—"_ Crowley paused to squint at the stream of liquid filling his cup. "Aziraphale. Did you miracle this thing?"

"Er. Yes?"

"Well, that explains why it's producing hot chocolate."

"Oh!" And somehow it felt like an absolute betrayal, like he'd let Crowley down terribly. "Oh, my dear, I'm so sorry, I thought I— let me try again, I'm sure I can— I didn't mean to—"

Crowley shot him a startled look visible even behind his sunglasses, and held out a hand in a soothing gesture.

"It's fine, angel. I can fix it." He snapped his fingers and the scent of coffee filled the office. "There, problem solved."

Aziraphale nodded, and swallowed hard, and tried to tell the rising wave of emotion that was choking his throat that really, the problem _was_ solved. Crowley was here, the whole messy discorporation business was sorted out, the coffee machine was back to its usual self...

"Can we get back to the part where the Devil has gone _missing_?" Anathema put in sharply.

Right. Yes. That was really the most important thing to discuss, Aziraphale thought, as Crowley slouched back across the office and handed him his cup of tea.

Everything else could surely wait.

* * *

"What about this guy?" Anathema asked, holding up her phone to show off a picture of a particularly notorious celebrity.

"Nah," Crowley replied, after squinting at the admittedly evil-looking individual. "Too much history."

"I thought you said he could fake that?"

"He can fake the paper trail," Crowley said. "Make it so there's birth records, financial records, and so on. Even he can't make everyone on the planet remember something different. That nasty piece of work there has been making trouble since long before Armageddon."

"So not any current world leaders, either, then."

"Yeah, no. Besides, even the Devil has standards," Crowley replied. "No, I reckon we're looking for something in the aristocratic line. Someone nobody's heard of until recently, but he's got all the paperwork to prove he's the son of someone-or-other, and the kind of money that gets him what he wants." He snorted. " _A man of wealth and taste._ You know, I still don't know if Jagger came up with that on his own, or if someone else was meddling. Wasn't me, I can tell you that."

"There's always been a rumour that he sold his soul to Satan," Newt put in. As the words left his mouth, he went wide-eyed with the apparent recollection that his world, these days, contained the possibility that such things might not just be a rumour. "Wrote that song for him to guarantee the success of the _Rolling Stones_."

"Now, that's _definitely_ not true," Crowley scoffed. "For the simple reason that no-one, in the history of the world, has ever _actually_ made a deal with the Devil."

"That can't be right," Anathema protested. "There are documented cases—"

"Of people making deals with _devils_ , small d, yes," Crowley interrupted. "I did a few of those myself, back in the day. But anyone who's ever claimed they struck a bargain with Satan was lying about it. Or they'd been tricked. More than one demon liked to pretend to be Himself, really get the mortals quaking in their boots. And everything gets rubber-stamped by Acquisitions in Satan's name, anyway, no way for a human to know who they've really made the deal with, unless they actually read the small print."

Crowley sighed and shook his head.

"And trust me," he finished, "nobody _ever_ reads the small print, on Earth or anywhere else."

He glanced at Aziraphale, half-expecting him to protest that he _did_ read the small print on everything (and, regretfully, this was entirely true). Aziraphale, however, was quiet, as he had been for hours, even as the rest of them squabbled and Googled and ordered Chinese for lunch. He'd barely even touched his dim sum, which was sounding an urgent klaxon on every level of Crowley's instincts.

"Angel?" Crowley prompted softly.

Aziraphale shot him a startled, guilty look that said he'd been miles away, and made Crowley want to grab him by the shoulders and demand to know what was going through that fluffy head of his.

"How can you be sure?" Newt asked. Crowley glared at him. He quailed in a satisfying way that the other two never did, but he finished his question, albeit with a gulp. "That— that no-one has ever made a deal directly with Satan?"

"Oh, we'd know about it," Crowley told him. "That kind of power... Hell likes to call itself a meritocracy, but there's a _reason_ Lucifer thought he could go toe-to-toe with God Herself. None of us come close, not even the Dark Council. Someone who signed their soul over to Satan would have made the kind of mark on history that doesn't get forgotten."

Everyone looked suitably impressed, except for Lily, who seemed to make it a habit never to be impressed by anything.

"Also," Crowley added, "he would never have shut up about it. He's that kind of boss. He'd be throwing it down in every quarterly meeting to prove we could all do better if we just had his _vision_."

Lily gave him one of her most sceptical looks.

"You've had a lot of meetings with him, have you?"

"We-ll..." Crowley grimaced. "Okay, no, barely seen him in millennia, to be honest, just like everyone else. But he was more hands-on in the beginning."

"Maybe that's why he's come to Earth," Aziraphale said slowly. "Do you think he could be intending to take a more active role in things? To influence humanity directly?"

Crowley gave a bark of wry laughter.

"Oh, now that I'd like to see. Lucifer Bloody Morningstar running around trying to get humans to do what he says and not what they damn well please." He smirked at the three humans in the room. "Like herding cats, you lot are."

"Look who's talking," Lily muttered.

"Oi!"

"Anyway," Lily went on, with a pointed glance at her screen. "While you've all been flapping around accusing every home-brewed human sociopath of being the Devil in disguise, _I've_ been looking into the courier company that delivered the bomb."

"How does that help us?" Crowley demanded.

"It _wouldn't_ , if it had been one of the big ones," Lily retorted. "But as it turns out, it's some London-only startup. Small outfit. Which means two things: the person who sent it must have been in London to do it, _and_ there's a much better chance that someone from the company met them in person and might remember them."

"Well, that's hardly..." Crowley trailed off in the face of the fact that it was, actually, extremely useful information. "Right, okay, fine, we'll go and talk to them, then."

"I'll send you the address," Lily said, tapping at her keyboard. Crowley's phone vibrated in response. "The rest of us can carry on looking for information while you're gone."

"The rest of you?" Crowley arched an eyebrow at her. "Anathema and Newt don't actually work here, you know."

"Someone's sending you letterbombs and the Devil is walking the earth, and you expect us to go home and forget about it?" Anathema demanded incredulously.

"No," Crowley admitted with a put-upon sigh, "I don't s'pose I do. Come on, angel. We can stop at that bakery you like on the way."

Aziraphale got to his feet and followed Crowley to the door with a quick murmur of goodbye to the humans, and absolutely no sign of delight at the thought of imminent cake, which was practically Apocalypse-levels of Not Normal. Crowley worried at his lower lip as he led the way down the stairs.

"Aziraphale," he said, as they emerged from the front door of the building, "are you all right?"

"Me?" Aziraphale replied, with something that was almost outrage. " _You're_ the one who got— got _blown up_ —"

"Yeah, and I'm fine now, all better, no harm done," Crowley replied, with a confidence he didn't quite feel. "But you're not."

"Don't be ridiculous, I'm simply— I'm quite—"

And then, to Crowley's considerable astonishment, Aziraphale suddenly turned and threw his arms around him.

"Urk," Crowley said eloquently.

"Oh, _Crowley_ ," Aziraphale mumbled into his shoulder. "I was so afraid you wouldn't be able to get back... that Hell would take the opportunity to try and punish you again..."

Crowley wrapped his arms tightly around Aziraphale and rested his cheek on top of his curls for a moment. Several people passing by glared at them for blocking the pavement, but there were also a couple of sentimental smiles that made Crowley want to shout, _it's not what it looks like! He's an ancient supernatural being having a momentary existential crisis, we are not_ cuddling _in the middle of the pavement, okay? I'm a demon, I would_ never!

"Angel," he said softly, intending to follow it up with some teasing joke or other. Somehow the rest of the sentence didn't come. The word just hung there between them, as old and familiar and comforting as shelter from the rain, and Crowley found he didn't really need to say anything else.

Aziraphale tightened his arms for a moment, fingers curling into Crowley's jacket, before pulling back with a sheepish smile, and a slight blush on his cheeks. He already looked more like himself.

"Right," he said, stepping back and brushing down his coat and waistcoat to remove invisible lint. "Let's get back to business, shall we?"

Crowley had a feeling that the smile on his own face at that moment was entirely un-demonic and probably far too revealing.

"Yeah," he said. "But let's get you some cake first."

Aziraphale's face lit up, and Crowley breathed a silent sigh of relief.

* * *

The headquarters of _Go Gecko_ turned out to be little more than a glorified broom closet on the second floor of an office block that hadn't been renovated since the Sixties. Aziraphale wondered how they could possibly fit their staff inside, a question that was answered, along with their knock, when the door opened to reveal that 'the staff' consisted of one young man in an expensive suit that didn't suit him, and with the pasty complexion of someone to whom natural light was a stranger.

"We're here about a package," Crowley said without preamble.

"Oh, of course, come in!" The young man ushered them into the cramped office, at least half of which was stacked with packing materials, leaving barely enough room for his desk and chair. There were no windows. "Fantastic to meet you, I'm Oscar, everyone calls me Ossie. As I'm sure you know, _Go Gecko_ is completely carbon neutral, uses only organic and sustainable resources, and our app is going to be _groundbreaking_ once we get it off the, er, ground."

"Your... app?" Aziraphale asked, trying not to dislike 'Ossie' on sight, and failing rather spectacularly. "There do seem to be a lot of those around these days."

"Ah, but ours is going to be _different_ ," Ossie replied eagerly. "It's going to be like Uber meets Deliveroo, with a bit of an Amazon twist thrown in."

"But you don't actually have one yet," Crowley pointed out shrewdly.

"It's taking slightly longer than anticipated to work out some of the details, but we're very close to deployment!"

Aziraphale generally didn't pry into human thoughts, but it was hard not to pick up the outlines, and they did nothing to assuage his distaste for the young man. The app was being 'developed' by a student friend who'd built a website once and thought it couldn't be that hard. The company was losing money, but Ossie's parents handed over extra funds whenever he asked, so it didn't seem like a big deal to him. The three couriers he currently employed were working extremely hard to keep things afloat, but Ossie wasn't really satisfied with their performance, because they didn't laugh at his jokes, and kept nagging about details like their pay being late, which was hardly anything to get worked up about.

"Right," Crowley was saying, "so this package. Exploded in our office. We'd like a word with whoever sent it."

Ossie's expression turned wary and obstinate.

"We can't take any responsibility for improperly packed goods, and obviously we can't release anyone's _personal data—_ "

"I'm not talking about 'improperly packed goods', it was literally a bomb! Blew a bloody great hole in the wall!"

Ossie went white, which was an impressive achievement given his already pallid complexion. He swallowed hard, then shook his head, dismissing the statement.

"That's impossible. The police would be here if anything like that had happened. And anyway, we're not liable. Our customers all sign the terms and conditions. You'll have to take it up with my lawyer—"

"Oh, for heaven's sake," Aziraphale muttered, losing patience. He snapped his fingers. Ossie's face smoothed out into peaceful contemplation of the far wall. "Now, you're going to tell us what we need to know, and then we're going to have a word about your business practices, understood?"

Ossie nodded. Aziraphale realised that Crowley was staring at him. He busied himself ushering Ossie over to the desk so he could look up his list of deliveries on his computer. Yes, all right, Aziraphale usually wasn't the one to do this, but really, the boy was far too infuriating to have a normal conversation with. Aziraphale watched him scroll through the entries until he spotted Crowley's name.

"Do you remember this customer?"

"Yes," Ossie said placidly. "He was weird."

"Weird _how_ , exactly?"

"Dressed funny. Weird hair. Weird accent. Thought the package was probably a drug drop, but that's not my problem. I'm not liable."

"What did he _look_ like?" Crowley demanded, coming to lean on Ossie's desk and glower at him.

"He was a black guy," Ossie replied confidently. "Scary-looking."

Aziraphale exchanged an exasperated look with Crowley. It was abundantly clear that to Ossie, anyone with skin even a few shades darker than his own would be classified as both 'black' and 'scary-looking'.

"Can you be more specific?" Aziraphale ground out.

"He had dreads, I think," Ossie said with a small frown. "Or something like that. Really long hair for a black guy. Maybe he was Jamaican or something. Oh, and he had a tattoo."

"What did it look like?"

"It was a symbol. Some sort of Arabic letter, maybe? Or a Celtic rune. It was in a really weird place, though. Right in the middle of his forehead, and pure _white_ , it really stood out against his skin—"

" _Oh_ —" Crowley began, reeling back, eyes wide.

"— _fuck_ ," Aziraphale finished for him, feeling like all the breath had been punched out of him. Of _course_. They should have thought of it sooner. "Did he give his name? An address? Any way of finding him?"

Ossie dutifully read off the details, but they were transparently useless: _Mr John Smith_ at _No. 1 City Road_ , whose telephone number was _123456_.

"Doesn't matter," Crowley insisted, rubbing at his temple with two fingers. "We know his name, and it's not like he'd make it easy to find him. Ugh, why _now_?"

"Is there anything else?" Aziraphale demanded. "Anything else at all you can tell us that might help?"

"He's probably got a criminal record," Ossie replied darkly. "Done some time, I'll bet."

"Oh, you have _no_ idea," Crowley muttered.

They left shortly after that, and if _Go Gecko_ underwent a surprising transformation afterwards, restructuring as a non-profit organisation dedicated to making local deliveries for the disadvantaged, well, humans were capable of quite astounding changes of heart, weren't they?

* * *

"Cain," Anathema repeated. "As in—"

"Yes, as in _that_ Cain," Crowley replied from his sprawl on the newly replaced office sofa. He was working up what promised to be one hell of a sulk. "Brother of Abel, world's first murderer, has a bit of a grudge against me for _reasons that are not my fault_."

"I thought he'd given up, after that debacle in Mumbai," Aziraphale commented. "He only ever managed to discorporate you the first time, after all."

"Not for lack of trying! And you try having a mile-high tower land on your head!"

"Wait, wait," Newt broke in. "Shouldn't Cain be long dead?"

"He _should_ be," Crowley muttered. He deliberately didn't look at Aziraphale, but he could _hear_ the guilty expression. "Bit of a cock-up with that. He can't die. Been wandering around for the last six thousand years causing trouble, and every so often he gets it into his head to try and kill me."

"Okay," Anathema said. Her voice had that particular note of exasperation-mixed-with-intrigue that meant she was about to start asking pointed questions. "Start at the beginning. The _relevant_ beginning. Cain and Abel. I always wondered about that story. What really happened?"

Crowley snorted.

"What _happened_ was, Cain was a little shit right from the start—"

"Now, Crowley, that's not entirely fair," Aziraphale protested.

"Oh, all right." Crowley sighed. "Cain was a perfectly normal brat who was just old enough to resent it when Abel came along. I mean, he was literally the only child in the _world_ for three years, and then all of a sudden there's this screaming bundle of snot taking up his parents' attention. Can't entirely blame him for turning into a little monster overnight. The fifth time Eve caught him trying to dump Abel in the river, she stopped finding it funny, and I don't think she ever felt the same about him afterwards. It was all new to them, parenthood and so on. They didn't know that kids take a few years to pick up things like empathy and conscience. Thought there was something wrong with him."

"Things got a bit easier for them once Seth was born," Aziraphale put in. "Cain got on all right with him, and Eve started trusting him around his brothers again. But I don't think he ever forgot, on some level that he probably didn't even understand, that his mother had turned against him and cast him out, all because of Abel."

"There's a metaphor in there somewhere," Crowley mused.

"Not a very subtle one," Aziraphale replied with a sigh.

"And where were you during all this?" Lily asked. "Babysitting?"

Crowley sniggered at the look of abject horror that crossed Aziraphale's face. The angel loved the _idea_ of human babies - or, perhaps more accurately, he loved the way _other humans_ felt about them, all that doting love spilling out over everything - but Crowley had never seen him interact with an infant in any way that didn't involve hastily getting out of range of any _fluids_.

Crowley himself had never really seen the point of babies. They only started to get interesting when they learned to talk, in his opinion, and particularly when they learned the magic word _why_ , which had been tormenting parents across the globe for six thousand years. And he hadn't even had to teach them that one.

"We were... er... _around_ ," Aziraphale said awkwardly. "Letting them get on with it, you know. Dealing with other business."

(In fact, they'd come up with a crude version of checkers several millennia early, just to have something to do, especially since wine had unfortunately not been invented yet. Crowley had worked out how to cheat about five minutes after working out the rules. Aziraphale had always pretended not to notice, and somehow kept beating him anyway.)

"The point is," Crowley said, forestalling further questions on that topic, "the thing with Cain and Abel went way back. It wasn't just a one-time argument. Abel was the golden child, Cain got more and more resentful until he was all spite and cruelty. It all came to a head after Abel had the bright idea of taming and breeding the local goats and sheep instead of hunting them like game. Made everyone's lives a lot easier, but also made all of Cain's efforts to grow a slightly bigger potato look a bit shabby, you know?"

"And Abel wasn't exactly, er... _humble_ about it," Aziraphale put in. "He bragged extensively—"

"He rubbed Cain's nose in it," Crowley corrected him. "Really made his own bed there."

"That doesn't excuse—"

"No, right, I know." Crowley grimaced at the prospect of explaining the next part. " _Anyway_. It's possible that _someone_ might have suggested they make sacrifices to God to see who She preferred."

"By 'someone'," Anathema said flatly, "you mean _you."_

"In my defence, I thought it would take Abel down a peg," Crowley argued. "I figured they'd both get the cold shoulder, to be honest. I didn't know that they'd come up with this superstition that the fiercer the flames of an offering, the more God approved. And of course, animal fat burns hotter and brighter than wheat or beans..."

"They fought dreadfully after that," Aziraphale said quietly. "Hurt each other with fists and sticks. Seth broke it up, talked them down. We thought it was over, when they went off to the fields together as usual. But only Cain came back."

"And _that's_ when Heaven suddenly decided to take an interest," Crowley explained sourly. "All sorts of Pronouncements we had then. Couldn't have got to that a bit sooner? Maybe had a word with them before one of them killed the other? But no, instead they sent Uriel down to give Cain a good talking-to, by which I mean she cursed him six ways from Sunday and told him to bugger off into the wild on his own. Oh, except the earth would reject him now if he tried to plant crops, so good luck not getting scurvy."

"How did that make him immortal?" Newt asked.

"The Mark," Lily replied before anyone else could. "The Mark of Cain. Whose idea was that, then?"

Oh, she really was getting to know them too well. Aziraphale fidgeted guiltily and obviously. Everyone looked at him.

"I just _thought_ ," Aziraphale said wretchedly, "that it was a bit _harsh_ — to send him off with no protection at all— but I didn't have, well, anything I could give him to defend himself, so I just said to Uriel, look, maybe it would be a better punishment if you guarantee he's not just going to get eaten by a lion within the week? And she, er. Went a little overboard."

"Uriel is the Archangel of Death," Crowley elaborated. "Always been a bit too buddy-buddy with Azrael. She slapped a great big 'do not touch' sign on Cain's forehead, and didn't give it an expiry date. Death can't take him, so he can't die."

"So he's just... still around?" Anathema said, looking appalled. "He's lived for six thousand years? That seems like an excessive punishment, even for murder—"

"More excessive than eternal torment in Hell?" Lily pointed out.

"Oh." 

Anathema stared at the wall with the beginnings of a worried little frown. Crowley didn't much like the look of it. She'd seemed unfazed by the discovery that a number of aspects of various major religions were literally true, but he had a suspicion it was partly because she still unconsciously thought that it didn't apply to her. That she could opt out, somehow, of the whole Heaven and Hell thing, of what awaited her after death.

"So that's all of it, that's what happened," Crowley continued quickly. "Over the centuries, Cain got really into building, since he couldn't farm anymore. That was how he made himself useful, once there were more humans around. People tended to forget stuff easily back then. All it took was one nasty plague to kill off the elders - or, y'know, a _massive flood_ \- and suddenly no-one remembered how to do the things they'd spent five generations inventing. Cain would turn up and show them how to make bricks, how to cut stone, how to mix mortar. I bumped into him while he was working on a pet project, little place you might have heard of, name of Babel."

"Ah," said Newt.

"Yep. Not gonna get into _that_ whole fiasco, but that was when I found out that he'd decided to blame me, personally, for what happened with Abel. Thought he'd got it out of his system when he discorporated me, but apparently he took offence at the fact that I came back. Ever since then he's been trying to do it again, and his personality has _not_ improved in six thousand years. If anything it keeps getting worse. Doesn't take much to offend him, and he's acquired a bit of a taste for murder."

"He turns up at the most _awkward_ times," Aziraphale complained. "And he's not very discriminating with his efforts. I've never forgiven him for what he did to the Library of Alexandria. It was so _unnecessary_! It's not like fire can even _hurt_ demons. I've always wondered if that wasn't as much a jab at me as an attempt on you."

"He isn't fond of Aziraphale, either," Crowley clarified. "But he's never tried to kill _him_."

He kicked his heels sulkily against the arm of the sofa. It certainly hadn't been his last encounter with the human tendency to blame demonic influence for their own bad decisions, but it had been the first - Eve being surprisingly forgiving of the whole apple thing - and it had never stopped rankling. Especially when he'd— he'd really, actually, been trying to _help..._

"So, in summary," Anathema said, in her _my patience is beginning to fray at the edges_ voice, "you have an immortal nemesis who's likely to come after you with no regard for who else might get hurt? And you didn't think that was worth mentioning?"

"Not really a _nemesis_ ," Crowley mumbled resentfully. "More like a mosquito you just can't swat. And it slipped my mind! Haven't run into him in nearly four hundred years _._ Thought he'd found a new hobby."

"Clearly not," Aziraphale sighed. "Well, at least we know who we're dealing with. Perhaps we can track him down and have a word with him."

"And what, discuss it like reasonable people over a cup of tea?" Crowley demanded.

"No," Aziraphale replied, coldly and without hesitation, "I was thinking more along the lines of making it clear to him that even if he cannot die, we can, if we choose, cause him far more inconvenience and discomfort that he can us."

Crowley gaped at him. Aziraphale pursed his lips mutinously.

"Really, someone should have done it centuries ago," he argued. "It's for his own good."

 _Oh, well, that's all right, then_ , Crowley thought, as the humans exchanged looks and hurried to turn to the subject of how they were going to track Cain down. _Nothing bad ever happens when you threaten people for their 'own good'._

He watched Aziraphale closely, feeling like he'd taken a bad step and the world hadn't quite righted itself, but Aziraphale refused to look in his direction until long after the conversation had moved on, when there was no longer anything to be read in his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note 1: Look, I know this _looks_ like I stole this plot element from _Lucifer_ , but I swear to Someone I didn't, I already had this in my outline before I watched any of the TV series.
> 
> ... I _actually_ stole it directly from _The Sandman_.
> 
> Note 2 (Jan 2021): Currently still on hiatus, but only because I want to prioritise finishing an original novel in the next month or so. After that I should be back to writing this.


End file.
